Loving a vampire
really is forever. When the minister says "till death do you part," it comes with a distant expiration date. Facing sex, marriage, and
permanent transformation into a creature of the night, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse finds Bella
and Edward exploring the neuroses of eternal love.

Should Bella
Swan say sayonara to her human friends to be with vampire Edward Cullen for eternity? Shouldn’t Bella graduate high school before making
eternal decisions? Will this puppy-dog romance ever bark its last breath? The Twilight Saga:
Eclipse is the first in the popular vampire-romance series to see that love has a downside.

Take a look at
the side stories: the film is haunted by images of eternal love distorted into something else. One vampire’s back story ends in revenge on
an ex-lover while dressed in a wedding gown. “I was much more theatrical in those days,” she says. Then consider the motives of the widow
Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) – raising an army of newborn vampires to avenge the death of her lover. The red-headed villain is motivated
by love and loss, the permanence of affection and the impermanence of existence.

Still, Twilight is selling the mythologies of youthful love and youthful perfection. As such, the film plays up
romance’s appeal and glosses over the problems in its werewolf-vampire-cockteaser triangle. Robert Pattinson’s steely cool softens
Edward’s gentlemanly detachment. Taylor Lautner’s genial personality and burly physique deflect the fact that Jacob is kind of a
manipulative asshole. And does Bella really love both men? Or does she love the fact that
they love her? Twilight insists that it is driven by the purity of teen-age love, but in reality it is driven by the blindness of teen-age
narcissism.

Perhaps I
wouldn’t feel this way if not every thought revolved around Ms. Swan. Shouldn’t young men talk baseball? Instead they talk Bella. Yet we
never feel why she’s so special, why so much is risked for her sake. Perhaps we would feel more if Kristen Stewart were improving
alongside the rest of the cast, rather than being outdone by the help. Instead, Stewart seems lost, or stuck, or generally apart from the
proceedings.

Directed by
David Slade (30 Days of Night), Eclipse is the most normal of the Twilight movies. Catherine Hardwicke’s hormonal original rode the line between swoony and corny
.New Moon’s Chris Weitz, oft criticized, brought a greater cinematic sense to the series. As
his contribution, Slade turns the series to both horror and coming of age. While I appreciate
its willingness to treat its characters as blossoming adults, very little of this film lasts. Will this ever-popular series ever produce a
true winner? It’s losing daylight.